Gary Burton – Alone at Last

Alone at Last

Gary BurtonAlone at Last Atlantic 1598 (1972)


Excellent solo outing from one of the biggest innovators of the vibraphone.  Burton’s greatest contribution was proving that a jazz musician could take the ostensibly fixed-tone free bar instrument and produce bent notes (by pressing one mallet into a bar to change its natural frequency while impacting it with another mallet).  Alone at Last is something of a template for other great virtuoso solo albums like Bobby McFerrin‘s The Voice and Sonny Sharrock‘s Guitar.